


The Frayed and Weathered Mantle

by Quinara



Series: To the Spikemobile, Away! [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comic)
Genre: Gen, plot_wout_porn, post 35, spikemobile, spuffy background, twangel, twuffy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-19
Updated: 2010-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-11 04:07:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quinara/pseuds/Quinara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>We could blame it on circumstance, if only circumstance had a voice with which to accept.</em></p><p>Now Spike's arrived in Scotland, Buffy joins the crew of the of the Good Ship Steampunk on a quest to find out what the heck is up with Angel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Frayed and Weathered Mantle

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the plot_wout_porn LiveJournal community. The rape/non-con warning refers to an exploration of the consent issues in the Buffy/Twangel sex in the Twilight arc, which is fairly heavily foregrounded and dealt with via near-flashbacks. There are also references to torture.

"So what's this thing called, anyway?" Buffy asked as she followed Spike up the steps to his ship. She couldn't keep calling it 'the Spikemobile' in her head, though she'd been calling it that for so long that she'd almost lost the urge to giggle every time she thought it.

"Oh, what, the ship?" Spike asked. He laughed, but then the humour died in his voice as he seemed to remember something not quite so funny. "Er, it wasn't my idea, all right, so don't…"

The steps led to a small bay with a ladder on the back wall, leading up to some sort of magic forcefield, shimmering white and purple in a way that promised lighting sparks if she tried to cross unwelcome. _OK…_ "Is it like… _The Yellow Submarine_?" Buffy asked, trying to continue the conversation. "_The Great Contraptionator_?" (Well, that proved she wasn't good at steampunk names.) Turning back to Spike, who was operating some sort of winch to pull the steps back in, Buffy was annoyed to find him looking away from her, avoiding the question entirely. "Fine; you're not keen on the name. But electricity, Spike?" She couldn't resist needling him. "You can't tell me you couldn't have stepped in when _that_ got left off the plan."

"Ah," Spike said, now looking perversely proud of himself. "_That_, you'll understand –" He met her look with a grin, still turning the winch. "– was a necessary part of the spec. We've got power inside the barrier, but for her chassis?" At last the steps returned to position, with a sonorous CLANG. "Nothing but steam and brass'll translate across dimensions."

"Dimensions?" Now that was actually ridiculous. "You cross _dimensions_ in this thing?"

Spike raised his eyebrows – _just you wait_ – then began climbing the ladder, up through the forcefield. She followed, to find herself on the ship's industrial-looking bridge – where company was waiting, two people leaning against their two big chairs, one eye-like window behind each. On the right was a guy who looked like he could have stepped out of UC Sunnydale, while on the left was a woman who – didn't. Her skin was, well, _blue_ – almost lavender, with indigo hair tied back in a bun. And her outfit? It looked like a three-piece suit, made out of russet leather, trousers tucked into riding boots and completed with a frilly white shirt and a pocket watch.

"Buffy," Spike told her, "this is Connor and Illyria."

"Hi!" Connor waved, with an easy-going grin, while Illyria offered, "Charmed."

"Don't mind her," Spike whispered, on Buffy's raised eyebrow. "I showed her some books to explain the steam business; then she found my laptop and, well…"

"Had a makeover?" Buffy offered, though she could only imagine what from. "Hi guys!" she said more loudly, also waving. "Funky ship, huh? I never did catch its name…"

"Didn't Spike tell you?" Connor said, with a sneaky hint of irony as the vampire in question glared, mulishly. "All of us had a name in the hat;" he admonished, "you're gonna have to get used to it sooner or later." Spike rolled his eyes. "Buffy!" Connor spread his arms wide, turning to her. "Welcome aboard the SS _Awesome_."

For a moment Buffy stared at him – at the glass-eye windows and the Titanic-engine-room walls – but then she couldn't help letting forth yet another gale of laughter.

"It's not _that_ funny, slayer," came Spike's sulky comment, though he couldn't quite contain his grin.

"It's the best thing I've heard all year!" she replied, not holding back, because it really was. "Spike: Captain of the SS Awesome…"

"He is not captain," Illyria interjected, drawing Buffy's laughter short so she could hear. "I am captain of this vessel."

"Uh, actually, Lil, none of us are captain, remember?" She couldn't quite believe that, even as Connor put his hands in his pockets, affectedly casual. "We agreed?" The stance was completed with a (vaguely familiar?) self-deprecating shrug. "Besides – if we're talking about who knows the ship best and spent the most time working on it, well…"

"Yeah, yeah," Spike replied, waving a hand. "Let's get on with this, shall we?" He immediately assumed a stance that Buffy recognised, with a jolt, as almost exactly like her own before she made a speech – though the hands-on-hips was all Spike. Ship didn't have a captain, huh? "The plan is to rescue Angel," he said, sounding certain though he glanced her way. She nodded, gesturing for him to continue, because that was definitely a good plan to have. "We know now that he's under some sort of mind-mojo, or had his personality suppressed at least. So maybe a witch, or…"

Connor waved a hand in the air. "Yeah, hi, I told you ages ago that this wasn't him."

"Yeah, mate," Spike replied, "and I told you I know firsthand it isn't beyond the old man to want the whole world sucked into hell – Buffy here'll confirm, won't you, love?" His eyes met hers.

Startled at being called on again so quickly, she cleared her throat. "Oh, um, sure – with Acathla. But that was Angelus…"

Spike nodded, retaining control even though he seemed to want to give it way. "Yeah, right," he said, "but point is we couldn't get a conclusive reading on the soul, so bets were off in that department."

Sounding as if she'd been thinking about this for a while, Ilyria added, with a sigh of regret, "One day I wish to meet this 'Angelus' of whom you speak so fearfully. I would perhaps be entertained."

First Drusilla and now this? Buffy was really beginning to wonder where Spike found these women – thankfully he let them continue without paying Illyria much mind. "Anyway," he cut across the silence, "since the problem's in his head, rather than his soul, I suggest we go and take a look."

And with that Buffy was definitely caught off guard. "Huh?" she asked, suddenly wondering if she was the only sane one here. "Take a look in his head? How are we gonna do that?"

Yet Connor carried on nodding, posing the nonsensical question, "Should we fire up the Dream Drive?"

Then Spike nodded too, as if this all made perfect sense. "Yeah, no time to lose."

Now Buffy could only watch as Connor and Illyria took their seats, then listen as the pipes along the walls immediately began to gush and whirr. With a demanding look at Spike, who was grinning like the demon he was, she asked, "What the hell is this thing doing now?"

"You'll love it," he said, at last giving her his full attention. "Look at this." With a gesture he directed her to a schematic on the wall, just next to where he was standing, and Buffy recognised it from the radar image Willow had shown her. It looked like it had been painted in careful, navy blue lines, but now she looked at it she could see parts slowly changing, the lines taking on a silvery hue as they seemed to streamline themselves into more organic curves, the body straightening. She looked to the front of the ship, where Connor and Illyria still sat before windows – but the window glass was changing too, not several clear panes anymore, but smooth and concave, imperfect in their clarity with a hint of cyan tinting them. On top of that, the world outside was growing larger and larger, strange and indistinct, full of shadow and shade. They were moving forward through a blurred, dark forest of a palette – when suddenly at the edge of the right window there was a bright and brilliant flash of green.

"Dawn," Buffy knew, no matter where they were, looking to Spike again as the ship abruptly turned away from the dazzling light.

"Mmm," he agreed thoughtfully, but she was distracted immediately by the schematic on the wall. It was clear now what the ship had become. In lines of rainbow-silver the side-view plan now showed very clearly a picture of a fish, round with big eyes and a grim-looking mouth.

She tried very, very hard not to panic. "Spike?" she asked softly. "Why, um, has your ship animorphed into a fish?"

"Well, got to blend in," he replied, looking at her mostly seriously. "You wouldn't notice an extra little fish in your dreams, would you? Spaceships tend to stick out a touch."

For a moment she did nothing but stare at him, trying to work out whether that was supposed to make any sort of sense. He seemed opaque as he looked back at her, eyes guileless to the point of blank in the face that usually wouldn't hesitate to share a joke. Was he hiding something? Quite suddenly she was attacked by a twinge of loneliness and uncertainty for having come aboard this ship with him – because how well did she know Spike these days, really? This was hardly responsible for someone in her position.

"Where are we going?" she asked more firmly, forcing herself to remember that this _was_ the mission. Or at least it was supposed to be, if she could get her head around it.

Blinking, Spike glanced away for a moment, as if expelling an errant thought. "Sorry," he said, though Buffy wasn't sure why he was apologising. "I know this must all seem mad – I keep forgetting you only…" He sighed. "We built this ship to take us anywhere, which you know, but that includes a lot of the stranger places, that don't quite make it onto the atlas. The way the magic works, it – the ship decides the best way to get there, and usually it'll camouflage itself, make itself fit into its surroundings." Now he rolled his eyes and she felt like they were at last on the same page. Because this was kind of ridiculous. "So," he finished dryly, "for a trip into Angel's head we're a fish. Not sure why, but you get used to it."

"OK," she replied carefully. "So we're actually going inside Angel's head?"

"His mind," Spike confirmed, "yeah."

* * *

It was slow going through the dreams – or whatever it was that filled the air around them now, in blurred and glimmering shades of grey. For ten minutes (or so), Buffy watched out of the ship's eyes, sitting with Spike on a convenient couple of chairs to the side of the bridge, but she couldn't tell where they were or where they were headed.

"I know where we're going," she said eventually, loud enough for the pilots to hear, "but is there anything to, like, look for? Say a landmark? A sign saying 'Angel's Brain Here'?"

Casting her a quick glance over his shoulder, it was Connor who replied, "Can you make out that patch of pale peach in the distance?" He gestured his arm above his controls and, if she squinted, Buffy could sort of see what he was pointing at. "That's the system of Angel's aura, and that's where we're headed."

"Oh," she commented, "huh." Then she tilted her head to one side. "It looks beige to me."

Spike snorted, in response to which she had to suppress a grin. She should have remembered that making fun of Angel was a sure-fire way to bring out the Spike she recognised. Unfortunately she wasn't entirely sure what having sex with Angel did, but she was trying to suppress that…

Hang on, where was that memory? Shouldn't she be able to picture what she'd done in toe-curling-if-cringe-worthy detail?

They were drawing closer to the beige swirl, but she was still wracking her brains for a sensation other than _wow_, which was still the only word she could associate with the experience. Not that this was a time to panic, but it was more than a little disturbing… They'd flown round the world, hadn't they? Through space?

It was then, as if to say she wasn't meant to remember, the ship shuddered. "What was that?" she asked. Other than a grim silence, Spike's only response was to clip a hefty-looking seatbelt across his stomach, an action she copied nervously, looking around the bridge for potential flying objects.

"We are unwelcome here," Illyria confirmed; Connor grunted, leaning into his controls as he directed them closer to the growing swirl of peachy beige.

Buffy wondered what Spike was thinking; he wouldn't look at her now, just stared past her to the outside world. As the shuddering came again, and again, growing constant and more violent, she tried to work out if she was supposed to say anything, not entirely sure why this didn't feel like she was in a sci-fi show, about to crash land on Mars. Her chair was practically a bucket seat, curving to hold her body and padded, but she was being thrown around inside it like it had been built for someone with a much larger frame.

Across the room, the schematic of the fish still glowed on the wall. Buffy stared at it, trying to focus, but eventually it made her feel too sick, so she shut her eyes, to darkness and the thundering creaks that filled the silence.

The shaking kept coming, on and on, harsher and harsher. In the moments Buffy's eyes rattled open, she thought she could see a great wash of peach, definitely peach, engulfing the front of the ship –

And then, quite suddenly, it was over.

The ship stopped moving. Carefully, Buffy opened her eyes, glancing at Spike as he glanced at her – they were both OK, it seemed. Then she turned to see where they were, coming face to face with two big windscreens showing nothing but… Water?

"So maybe my record's developing a scratch," she commented, "but, uh, where are we now?"

"If Scott Tracy steered us right," Spike replied, unbuckling, "we should be in Angel's dreamscape." He got out of his chair to get a better view through the window-eyes and Buffy followed, feeling a little like a lemming – hopefully without a cliff.

"I know dreamscapes!" she began, but Connor was saying at the same time, "I don't know what weird British thing you just compared me to, but I resent..."

"Never mind that," Spike murmured, looking at the computer readings and then peering round the side of the notably wide peripheral vision offered by the fiship (that she still couldn't work out what to call). It was definitely water outside, with twitches of shadows and greens and purples beyond the murky blue – like they were in the sea, maybe? Like it was an afterthought, he asked, "What did you say about dreamscapes, Buffy?"

"Oh," she said, shaking herself from the distraction of the outside ocean, "I was just gonna say that I went on a dream journey – a while ago now, and it was inside my own head, but there were doors to go different places, and, um…" Embarrassing threesome dreams, which had obviously been directed subliminally by bad porn, because Naughty Nurse wasn't even one of her fantasies… "It was hard to control what you found." Or at least Ethan Rayne had made it seem that way.

"Well, hopefully we'll find something useful." Spike nodded, the slightest twinkle in his eyes that told he'd read a hint of the truth in some or other reaction of her body – but she held her head high, because it wasn't like you wouldn't find dirtier stuff inside _his_ head.

"I see something," Illyria said shortly, distracting them. "We must turn to port and dive."

_Port?_ she mouthed at Spike, and he jerked his head in Illyria's direction, to Buffy's left, as Connor turned the wheel and pulled on a lever. Oh, right, she thought – shippy port.

"What is it?" Connor asked, eyes flicking between his monitors and the window. "I can't see…"

His voice drifted off as clear shapes came into view, off in the distance, and Buffy and Spike on his side of the bridge looked too as they pulled closer. It was a table, or something, on the seabed, with people sat around it like the Mad Hatter's tea party. They seemed very close, though all readings indicated they were still far away – of course, they'd shrunk, Buffy remembered.

The figures became taller than life-size as they approached, at least from Buffy's perspective, and she suddenly recognised the back of Angel's head. He was sat at the head of the table, while sitting along it, passing food between plates and tureens, were other people she didn't recognise.

No, wait – "Is that Cordelia?" she asked, looking at the woman sitting on Angel's right. There was something wrong with her face, though. "And, hey, isn't that you?" she asked Connor, looking at the boy version of him on Angel's left, wearing really strange-looking brown clothes. There was something wrong with _his_ face too.

"The gang's all here," Spike said, and she assumed these were all the people she'd heard about from Willow – the black guy and the white guy, the green demon guy and the not-Cordelia white woman whose features, hollow-looking like the others', were nevertheless somewhat familiar as she smiled and laughed. More people were there with them, indistinct as they seemed to sit too far away. Spike, however, was _not_ there, she was almost certain, and she wondered whether she shouldn't be annoyed his behalf.

"What's going on with their – our faces?" Connor asked, looking round to Spike and revealing his youth in his eyes.

She watched as Spike set his mouth in a tight line. "They're all dead," he replied.

Suddenly it was obvious: the skin of everyone at the party was stretched taut over their bones, sinking into the hollows of their face (and not in a good way). Their eyes were barely visible in the gloom, but Buffy didn't think she could see much colour in them, and the more she thought it the more milky-white they seemed, not focusing or reacting though the corpses mimed conversation.

"This dream is of no pertinence to us," Illyria said, across the central console – which had more buttons on it, but also what looked like storage containers. Knowing Spike they contained beer. "It speaks of past regret, of present dissatisfaction; it is Angel's emotions, not his intentions, nor direct cause of this situation."

"You're right, you're right," Spike replied, visibly shaking himself, though he didn't sound entirely convinced. "What was it you said, slayer? Doors? We need to be moving on."

Speechless, Buffy nodded, unsure what to think about this dream. This scene could only be a fraction of a second's thought during a nighttime of sleep, but that it was here waiting for them, the first thing they found in Angel's mind… It seemed important.

"There is a magic boundary within the table's covering; take us closer, child, and I shall traverse it."

Connor glared Illyria's way for a moment, before steering them closer. "The 'child' thing is getting old, your majesty."

The Awesome swam past Angel's ear, and it gave Buffy more than a little pause to realise that they were not only small, they were _tiny_, not much longer than the distance between Angel's ear and the end of his nose. They were accelerating as they dived down to the tablecloth, however, and even though gravity didn't seem to shift (or was at least shifting in their favour), Buffy reached out for a convenient brass bar near the ceiling, her other hand latching onto Spike's sleeve. He offered her the crook of his arm.

The silverware on the table vanished, quite suddenly, and the white seemed to disperse around them, flurrying and flashing and breaking up a bright blue sky. After a moment it became obvious that the white was forming snowflakes, swirling and slapping against the eyes of their apparently airborne fish.

"Can't we sort this out?" Spike asked exasperatedly, and, after she had snorted his displeasure, Illyria tapped some buttons so the snow began to be deflected from the cornea-glass, not that it did much to clear their vision _through_ the snowstorm.

Knowing it was redundant, still Buffy asked, "Where's Angel?" She scanned the sky – and was that grass below? – for a figure hopefully wearing a big black coat. There was something in the distance. "Is that him?" She pointed forward, and Connor immediately responded, leaning on the accelerator. "It looks like he's… Pacing?"

Spike put his head next to hers, looking where she was pointing, then leaned back to address Illyria, commenting, "Look's like he's talking as well – audio might be nice."

Almost immediately, the sound of the storm filled the bridge, the keening and whining of the wind. Behind it, Angel might have been shouting – there was a deeper tone cutting through intermittently, but not clear enough to be heard.

"I'll take us closer," Connor stated loudly, having to raise his own voice above the sound of the storm.

As Angel's form became more distinct, so did his voice, though the angry words remained indecipherable. Then, as they were drawing closer, they all jumped as another voice spoke, disembodied and clear as a bell:

"ANGEL, THIS IS OUR LOVE. THIS IS HOW WE SHOW OUR LOVE. THIS IS HOW YOU EXPERIENCE OUR LOVE. OUR LOVE IS TO BE EXPERIENCED."

They were less than a metre from Angel now; his frustrated reply rang through the bridge, "This is a _snowstorm_!" he shouted. "It's nothing I can touch; nothing I can hold! How can I know love when it isn't _there_?"

Buffy found her stomach clenched, hearing his voice – her hand tightened on Spike's arm. It wasn't as if Angel's protestations about Twilight were old in her ears, but to hear him talk passionately to someone other than her, as if the rest of the world existed, it… She wanted him back. Maybe not in any capacity of a baked goods' consumer, but back to where he said things that made sense.

Although, 'sense' was possibly the wrong word, almost definitely as the disembodied voice continued, "WHAT IS LOVE IF NOT METEOROLOGY? TO CHANGE THIS WORLD AROUND YOU? WE MAKE THIS WORLD OUR OWN FOR YOU."

"I never asked for _snow_!" Angel shouted again. "Don't I have more to offer? Than to be cold but still not freeze? There is more to love than this!"

Suddenly the world began to change around him, around them. The storm slowed and stilled, until it was night and Angel stood quite clearly on a snow-drifted hilltop. For a moment he stood in silence; then he began scooping up armfuls of white.

"Angel?"

They all jumped again, though Buffy was sure she jumped higher than the others, because that was _her_ voice, familiar but embarrassing as a recording. Her heart started thumping.

"Should've seen this bloody coming," Spike muttered, feeling like he was suppressing shivers. Connor was pulling the ship away from Angel, until they could see her, standing just on the other side of the hill.

She looked like a child. Not how Buffy knew she'd _actually_ looked as a child, but unmistakably herself and unmistakably small and young and, well, childlike. No older than ten.

Angel approached the mini Buffy with his armful of snow, dumping it at her feet then packing it around her ankles and their frilly little-girl socks. "Gotta grow you big and strong," he said, turning away and gathering more snow. "One plant left in the garden; gotta make this work."

He built up the snow, armful after armful, though it never seemed to rise above her knees.

"Angel?" mini-Buffy asked again, as they all watched from the ship, not sure what to say. "Angel!" And then the mini Buffy was growing, turning into teenage Buffy dressed in awful nineties clothes, growing taller than Angel and wearing things that Buffy found more familiar. "I'm growing without your help!" she cried, her voice anxious but deep with age, the edges of the sound whistling like the storm that had just left. She was still growing taller and taller. "Angel!"

"Um…" Buffy said to the others on the ship, before pausing, unsure how to express that this was really, really creepy. "It might be time to go?"

"I see no path to leave this dream," Illyria replied, leaving Buffy with no option but to grit her teeth and press her fingers into Spike's arm.

Looking at her with an expression of sympathetic annoyance, but actually very little pain, Spike eased her hand down his arm so he could clasp it with his own. She took the comfort gladly, leaning into him as Connor asked, "What's happening now?"

What _was_ happening? Angel was beginning to climb the mound of snow, which still only went up to dream-Buffy's knees, but that, because of dream-Buffy's ever-increasing height, was almost three times as tall as him. He crawled up the snow, but as he did so the night grew darker and darker, until his face was barely visible against dream-Buffy's denim-clad leg, which he was still climbing. His snorts of exertion were soon more present than him.

Nevertheless, they could still see that dream-Buffy was shrinking back to proportion as he climbed, slowly returning to normal height again.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," Spike then commented, and Buffy knew what he meant as the figures' clothing seemed to pale in the slight, slight starlight. There was a breeze starting, the merest suggestion of a coming gale.

The two figures weren't standing anywhere, she realised – the ground had gone and they were in space, just floating. Angel's breathing was growing heavier, and the dream version of her own seemed to be joining it. The paling clothes were growing sleek and tight, becoming skin on bodies that were slowly revealing themselves… "OK!" she said abruptly. "Nothing to see here, let's turn this baby around, all systems go, full throttle, pedal to the – "

"_GAHH!!_" she was cut off by her own scream, by light, by the violent convulsion of bodies and the complete removal of doubt that a very naked vision of her and Angel weren't orgasming in front of them, bodies fifty times the size of theirs.

It was like time stood still.

Then the bodies began to fuck again. The storm kicked up from nowhere, loud and howling as the noises Angel and dream-Buffy. She could do nothing but stare, mortified.

Was this what she didn't remember? Was it? Why couldn't she stop looking?

"Why aren't we going yet?" she heard Spike ask through gritted teeth, his hand twitching in hers with every pant, moan, cry and scream that echoed through the sound system.

A particularly high-pitched whine caused Connor to jolt in his seat; Buffy felt her face burn bright red as she at last cringed away. "On it!" he said, and the ship began to turn.

"And get that sound off!" Spike barked.

But it wouldn't end that easily. Just as the gyrating bodies moved out of sight, the breathiest of gasps roared into the bridge like a hurricane, rattling fittings. "The receiver is jammed!" Illyria exclaimed; Buffy took a moment to curse steam as a design philosophy.

Worse than that, on another breath the whole ship shuddered, as if caught in a squall, then rolled so she and Spike were thrown away from Connor's seat to the side of the hull. More breaths shook them, pulled them in and sent them away; skin filled all the windows, another angle, stomach against stomach, and they were being pulled closer and closer –

Angel drew a dragon-like huff of air, which buffeted them again, spinning the ship past chests towards faces; Buffy was slamming into the ceiling as a dark red nipple rolled in front of the fish's eyes. The wind was fast around the ship and the bodies now, screeching like they were in a wind tunnel and probably doing more damage.

Then they were somewhere else, held in a hand and forced into hair, into a different type of hair, which was when Buffy covered her face (because _no, no, no,_ this wasn't happening) and braced her head. The forces on the ship getting stronger; she and Spike were thrown to the floor, to the ceiling, soundly against the walls, against their seats which they at last managed to grab hold of.

"There is a breach!" Illyria roared at last, against the sound of sex and storm-battered brass.

Jerkily, the ship accelerated forwards and Buffy raised her head to see where they were going. It looked like empty space, but but they were getting away and she was too grateful to care it could be a black hole. Gradually the ship regained its stability, speeding faster and faster away from the roaring cries Buffy refused to believe she made as she approached orgasm.

In a moment it was like they were sucked through the star-shot blackness, to arrive somewhere new.

Silence. A well lit room with untended plaster walls.

_Where the hell is this?_

For a long moment they didn't move. As her heart rate slowed, Buffy steadily unclenched her hands from around her chair, rising to her feet a little shakily. Spike joined her and hey stepped back to their place behind Connor, watching the room for whatever was about to happen.

Another few seconds, and then the dream revealed itself. "This is your fault," yet another vision of Angel was saying, pacing across an unremarkable off-white floor about ten feet below them. With shaky fingers, Connor steered their tiny ship to get a better view of the room, dropping lower and hugging one of the walls like a fly.

It looked like Angel was talking to another version of himself, strangely enough. "Keep telling yourself that; it's fun to watch." The other Angel was sitting on the floor, back to the wall almost indolently with one knee drawn to his chest. He smirked as the other Angel frowned, before scoffing – at which point Buffy decided he couldn't be anyone but Angelus. Great. "It's not exactly a _secret_ that you want to bone the girl," he continued sarcastically. "Or, at least, not anymore."

"I didn't want it like that," Angel argued back, clearly frustrated. "Anyway, _you're_ the one who tries to bring on apocalypse, not me."

Angelus rolled his eyes, not moving from the floor. "You know, I find it so hard to keep track… Are you telling me you're _not_ the brave and valiant superhero? You're _not_ fighting for love and redemption? For a brighter and better world? Well, great; I know this hellgod - he wants to make a deal…"

Clearly at the end of his tether, Angel's fists clenched as he stormed over to his double, only to halt as he realised he was being laughed at. "God, do you not _stop talking_?" he growled instead, turning and pacing back to the other side of the room. "This is like having Spike in my brain."

The real Spike laughed at that, short and sharply; Buffy looked at him, more than a little confused that his reaction hadn't echoed _her_ mental 'hey!'. He waved a hand dismissively. "Just thinking that dear old Angel knows how to hit Angelus where it hurts." Grinning, he added, "Even if he meant it, I think he knocked the old git speechless."

"This is Angelus?" Illyria suddenly chimed in. "He appears… Bored and ineffectual."

"He's probably been stuck here a long time," Spike mused.

Buffy watched the image of Angelus scowl, silently glaring around the room as he drummed the fingers of one hand against his knee. It was fair to say that he looked very, very bored. "I hate be petty about semantics," he commented offhandedly, "but your brain is my brain, and you do enough for my reputation as it is without pretending you can't even grasp simple metaphysics." His gaze wandered around the bare room, landing on Angel's back – and then, worryingly, he looked straight at them.

"Oh, shit," Connor said. Angelus' eyes didn't move.

"Is that supposed to happen?" Buffy asked nervously. Why wasn't Angelus looking away? They were only a fish. Maybe this was a time to panic.

Back in the dream, Angel pivoted on one foot and began, "Spare me the intellectual superiority…" Then he paused too. "What is it?"

"Tell me, Soul Boy," Angelus asked, slowly and carefully, "has there always been a lanternfish on that wall?"

Connor again: "Double shit."

"Huh?" Angel looked where Angelus was looking, giving them a direct view of his eyes.

Connor's fingers moved to the controls, but Spike put a hand quickly on his shoulder. "Don't move," he said shortly. "If this isn't a dream…"

"…We need to find out what we can," Connor finished with the slightest laugh, nodding as he forcibly relaxed back into his seat.

They needed to stay as long as possible, Buffy could recognise that, but at the memory of their recent manhandling her heart began to rush. Dream-sex was one thing – uncontrolled and out-manoeuvrable for a start – but she wasn't sure how well the ship, or they, could hold up against two Angels intent to destroy them. More than that, squished on the floor of Angel's dreamworld was not on her list of glorious ways to go out.

"D'you think it's a spy?" Angel asked, drawing closer.

Behind him, Angelus rose to his feet. "Why would he need a spy?" Buffy made a mental note of that 'he'. Maybe there _was_ information to be gleaned here. "There's no way out and thankfully even _you_ realise our killing each other wouldn't be useful."

"Maybe he gets off on it," Angel answered, stopping below them, one foot from the wall. "The watching."

"So under everything he's a control freak?" Was it noteworthy that Angelus didn't sound convinced? "After surrendering himself so utterly? It would be perverse, I suppose…"

As Angelus drew closer, Buffy's pulse sped even faster. She wasn't scared of _him_ – after all, without his mocking eyes actually meeting hers he didn't quite feel real – but the situation was going to break soon, and she had no idea how it was going to go.

"Blue," Spike asked through gritted teeth, probably hearing her heart, "is there a way out of here?"

"No," came Illyria's reply.

"We can still shift," Connor suggested shakily. "But I don't know what that'll do inside…"

Buffy kept her eyes on the action of the room. Both Angels were looking up at them, both calculating, both reserving their anger for when it was needed.

Until, quite suddenly, they both jumped. Buffy jumped too, but kept her ears open for Angel's "What's that?" It was followed seconds later by a far-off sound.

"What _is_ that?" Buffy asked her shipmates. It sounded like the storm was coming back, but without any wind. Far in the distance, a high-pitched whine was starting up, just at the edges of her hearing. It was completely out of place

"Not a clue," Spike replied, before pre-emptively covering his ears with his hands, grimacing. This wasn't good.

They all followed suit as the noise grew louder, including the Angels in the dream room. Unlike before, however, it didn't stop at storm-levels; instead the keening rose on, to bad-screamer-metal-concert levels and beyond, aggressive against Buffy's eardrums, against the hands that covered them.

More than that, the room was growing brighter, whatever bulbs there were increasing in wattage to match the decibels – and then it was just whiteness coming, filling the ship's bridge and Buffy's vision as the screaming ringing still filled her ears.

"What the hell is this?" she tried to shout, but she couldn't hear herself, only the screeching in her ears.

Coloured lights (on Connor's controls?) were flaring through the white and then, suddenly, through the panic kicking in against the sound, she had a feeling in her gut like she was accelerating. It wasn't the ship – she was still standing up, not being thrown around like before – but she was being moved away from the sound and the white, white light. Maybe they were all being moved? The acceleration was sickeningly fast, dragging and clawing at her insides, the noise still ringing in her ears. She shut her eyes, but her eyelids burned red from the assault of the light. She had her mouth open and felt like she was screaming, her throat was hoarse, and she couldn't take it anymore so she gave herself up to the sound – _I give myself up, I give myself_ –

Then it stopped. Everything stopped. Unsure what thought she'd been trying to complete, she collapsed to the floor of the bridge, throwing up like she was rejecting the memory of the light, keeping her eyes closed as her ears still rang.

Now her throat _hurt_.

(And shit, shit, shit, she thought as the nausea subsided. She knew exactly what the content of her stomach was at that moment. _Gross with a capital G; please let it just look like sick; oh please let no one realise…_)

Eventually, at the touch of Spike's hand between her shoulders, she straightened her back and opened her eyes. "All right there, slayer?" he asked, crouching at her side with, of all things, a red fire bucket full of sand. His voice was affected by the ringing, a weird number of tones above its own pitch, but she nodded anyway.

"Where are we now?" she asked as he poured the sand over the floor in front of her, her eyes somehow averting themselves from catching a glimpse of what she'd sicked up. There was the sound of footsteps around them, like Connor and Illyria were moving.

Not meeting her eyes anymore, Spike answered, "Connor made the call to do an emergency escape. With the noise and the light…" He sounded serious, but not as if he'd had the same experience she had. "Plan became a bit of a bust."

"Huh?" she asked, still feeling shaken.

"Need a dustpan and brush," Spike muttered, standing up. "We're at our HQ," he told her. She swallowed; they'd met up quite a few times, but Spike's base was in Africa. (Tanzania, she remembered – some city. Arusha?) A long way from home. "How about I meet you on the ground, yeah? Got a few things to check on board."

He was distracted, she could tell that. Dizzy as she was, however, she wasn't sure how to contradict him, so as he left for the bowels of the ship she slowly rose to her feet, made her way to the ladder, then down, out of the bridge.

* * *

When she'd first visited Spike's HQ, on a quick trip with Willow maybe eighteen months ago, she'd been expecting something impressive. Not quite like a Bond villain's hidey-hole – because who _really_ had enough money for a private army? – but nevertheless custom-built. She'd been spoilt by bad guys and good guys and their organisations over the years into thinking that wasn't that unlikely.

What it had actually been, and still was, was a shared workshop. A hangar if you were feeling generous, but it wasn't even owned by Spike, so much as an old and distinguished African gentleman who ran a chain of hotels and whom Spike knew through 'family connections', whatever that meant. His team of engineers had helped with the SS Awesome's design, but now they were working on something new, which took up most of the workshop's space.

"What is it?" Buffy asked, walking over to join Connor and Illyria, who were sitting on chairs by a table at the side of the room. The air-conditioning vent was right above their heads, but Buffy found the blast of cool air more than welcoming.

Pulling round a chair for her, Connor answered, "We think it's some sort of mountain vehicle, to take vamps up Mount Kilimanjaro." The table had a convenient water cooler on it and some plastic cups, so Buffy filled a couple, passing one to Connor and edging one towards Illyria – then taking it for herself when it was rejected. Connor continued, "The gang were telling me about the plans back when we were working on the Awesome."

"Maybe I shouldn't be surprised," Buffy replied, not that she was, really, but she couldn't be certain that wasn't just the shock, "but is there actually a market in that? A market that leaves people generally alive?"

Connor nodded his thanks for the water. "It's Bilali's idea," he said – that was the guy who owned the workshop, Buffy remembered. "Apparently he's always done well out of vampire tourism. It's all in the vetting, or something."

"Well, sure," Buffy replied and they settled into silence again.

After two more cups of water, when Buffy had finally relaxed under the cool air and the strangely comforting smell of hot metal and wood, Illyria impatiently asked, "Where is the vampire? Our plans must proceed."

"Good question," Connor replied, though he snuck a glance at Buffy as if he knew. "You'd think he'd be done brooding by now."

"Brooding?" Buffy asked, surprised. "Spike doesn't brood." She qualified, "Much."

With the slightest roll of his eyes, Connor explained, "Well, since he does it about you I guess you wouldn't get the chance to see. But brooding does occur. And often."

That didn't feel right. She could imagine Spike thinking about her – she thought about him after all – and she could imagine him brooding, maybe, between the rants and the pity-parties. But right now, in the middle of the mission? This was more like something was up.

"I'll go and see what he's doing," she suggested, not meeting any disapproval.

Whatever was going on, she thought as she headed back to the ship, they needed to get the show back on the road. Her mind had cleared up now and scanning what they'd seen for clues. Who was the 'he' Angel and Angelus had been talking about? An unlikely control freak? It had to be some sort of outside influence, who'd made Angel do all the things he'd done, like a puppet master – ooh, they'd met one of those – or a Bigger Bad, some higher up in the army, maybe?

It didn't take long to find Spike's cabin. The empty bottles by the door would have been a dead giveaway even if she hadn't been able to see the vamp himself from the corridor. He was fervently leafing through one of several books on a makeshift desk, shifting paper and a laptop so he could hold the pages closer to an anglepoise lamp coming out of the wall.

"Knock knock," she said, touching her knuckles to the open bulkhead. "Anybody home?"

Spike looked up, startled. "Oh, hello, love, didn't see you there." He didn't rise out of his chair.

Hesitantly she took a few steps into the room – the bedroom, as she now realised it was. "Yeah, well, we were all wondering what was up with you. You didn't come outside." She looked at her watch. "It's been twenty minutes."

In an instant his eyes closed off and he looked back to the book, scanning the page then turning to the next. "Yeah, sorry – nothing for you to worry about though. Nothing at all."

Maybe he _was_ brooding, she thought. He certainly didn't seem to be reading anything and maybe she _didn't_ know Spike that well anymore. Maybe Connor was right. "Is there anything you want to talk about?" she asked the crown of his head.

"No," he replied, still not looking up and frowning now.

OK, enough was enough. "Are you acting weird because of the sex dreams?" she asked straight out, putting her hands on her hips. _Because of the sex?_

"_No_," he replied more aggressively, ripping a page as he turned it. "Don't be stupid."

Forcibly relaxing her hands, she tried to remain calm. "Oh yeah," she said, "I'm the one being stupid. I'm the one acting weird here. I'm the one acting bitter, and petty, and…"

"_Petty_?" Now he looked at her, his face like a stormcloud, grey with the light in his eyes threatening sparks. If he hadn't been thinking about her and Angel before, well, that was over with. "You think it's _petty_ to care about you, to care about what you did with – to _care_ how soundly you tore my heart out, you tore that poor girly slayer's heart out? You think that's petty?" He stormed over to her, getting in her face until she was raising her chin, clenching her jaw so it stayed firm. "I know our priorities don't match, _slayer_, but that is _not_ a _trivial_ concern."

"It's not trivial to me either!" she shouted back, almost feeling her words rebound off the bones of his face. The moment her words left her throat it all came bubbling up, the embarrassment and the confusion and the sickening memory that she had enjoyed every second. "You think I don't know what I did? Not just to your feelings – because, forgive me, but they _aren't_ the priority when the sky's falling in – but what I could have done to the world? You think I don't know?"

She looked up at him desperately, focusing only on the wide blue eyes that stared at her, at the pupils dilating in the lack of light she offered. Dimly, like it was refracted through a dozen mirrors, she thought she could remember what she'd done with Angel. But the moments before, the moments after, they were so much clearer and she couldn't be certain that her memories weren't the echoes of what other people had told her.

And maybe this wasn't the mission, maybe this wasn't what was important, but how could she move forward without knowing what had happened to her? What she'd done? Whether she'd even done it at all? She remembered euphoria, but was it coming from her or over her? Whose fault were her actions?

Were they Angel's? Had Angel manipulated her into what she'd done? She couldn't believe that. Even if it was her own fault and she was forced to face up to that, she couldn't believe it had been Angel.

Backing away from Spike, she covered her eyes, willing herself back to the present situation and out of her mind. "Buffy?" his voice called, so very tender now, but she blocked it out, dismissing comfort as she tried to pull every cell of her body into regimented line.

With soft pads of footsteps, Spike was making his way towards her. She focused on him, on that sound, pulling to mind all her thoughts about him and banishing the rest. At the back of her mind was the smallest lick of anger, left from when he'd called that first time, and she seized hold of its heat, opening her eyes to glare up into his face. If she was going to accept it was her fault, then she was going to go down guns-blazing. "You let me think you were dead."

He stalled halfway towards her, mouth opening to a minute moue. "I… That was a long time ago."

"You let me think you were dead." Very carefully she nursed her old anger; it felt like winning back control. "You talk to me about – heartache, but you, you were worse, you were…" She jabbed him in the chest with her fingers, all four against his breastbone, rocking him back. "You kept me in limbo, not allowed to talk to you properly, not allowed to accept you into my life – you turned me to stone, like slow, numbing petrifi-whoosit – I spent _years_ waiting for you to – so of course I…" Staring up, she met the tears in his eyes. "_You made me think you were dead._"

She didn't know how he was going to reply to that – she didn't know how she wanted him to reply to that – but, all of a sudden, it didn't matter, because the shadow of another thought flitted across her mind, tearing her from the pain of these particular emotions.

There was someone else to blame. Not Angel, not her, not Spike. Somebody else.

As Spike breathed out, "Buffy," soft and apologetic, she shook her head, letting the thought blossom into life. She kissed him with old and soundless forgiveness, eyes unfocused as she thought it through. _Let me think you were dead._ It had relevance, but to more than just the vampire in front of her.

"I know who's pulling the strings," she said at last, smiling at Spike's speechlessness. "Earth to Spike?" she tried again, waving a hand in front of his face. "Hello? Mission bell's ringing?"

Before his rational brain could turn on, it seemed, he was kissing her again, sorry and angry and painfully in love, caressing her face with trembling fingers. When he pulled back she could feel her heart scoring SPIKE on the inside of her ribs, above all other priorities – but, still, she demanded of herself, this was more important. She spoke breathlessly, "I know who stitched up Angel – and me and everyone."

"Who?" Spike asked, distracted, almost certainly not listening as he stared at her mouth.

She put a hand to his face, encouraging him to look up. Taking a breath, feeling her chest rise, she then said, "Ethan Rayne."

For a moment he stared at her, frowning as he tried to recall the name. Hope lit up his eyes and then, bizarrely, he exhaled, deflated as if a secret had been torn from him. "Buffy – it can't be." He stepped away, the tension between them broken.

OK, that wasn't the response she'd been expecting. "What?" she asked, confused. "But it all makes sense – with the dreams, and – and how goddamn random everything's been?"

Turning away from her, now Spike began to pace, forcing his fingers through his hair and looking very, very stressed. "I should have told you the moment we landed – I should have told the others…" He paused. "There's a reason I wanted to go into Angel's mind," he said, "specifically."

"What?" she asked, her stomach dropping away slightly though her instinct was still telling her without a doubt that it was Ethan. This was the actual thing that had been plaguing him, she could tell that now. She wasn't going to like it.

"I did research!" he swore, pointing to the papers and his laptop. "I should have said something, but I was hoping, so bloody…" At last, he took a slow breath and met her eyes mournfully. "Inside someone's mind, inside their dreams, the only thing that can hurt you is _them_. Any outside force, any influence? Doesn't matter – it might form barriers but it can't act against you. It can only do what it's been put there to do, you see?" He made it sound imperative that she saw. "That stuff trying to hurt _us_? That was Angel."

She didn't believe it, but she knew she should hear him out. Even though he was wrong – there was always a loophole – she said, "Keep going."

"I thought…" He sounded slightly desperate. "I thought that was why we were having so much trouble getting around – some sort of mind control. But in those – dreams of you two? And at the end? The only person who could have had that much power was Angel, one way or another." Almost like a sob, he exhaled a harsh breath of air. "It's him doing this."

"No," Buffy refused, point blank. She thought out loud, "Maybe _part_ of him is doing this, but… I _told_ you about Ethan Rayne – band-candy-turning-Giles-into-a-demon guy? He did the Halloween costumes back when you were actually bad? He doesn't do obvious, direct stuff, I mean, he worships chaos! He probably made Angel glowy then set him off so he could watch and gloat. Maybe it's Angel doing the stuff, but it's not his _fault_." It couldn't be.

The awful thing was, Spike clearly wanted to believe her.

"Look," she bargained with him. "If Ethan's actually dead then it's clearly not him, and we can go from there. But it is _so_ worth checking."

He sighed, as if giving in. "And how are we going to do that?"

She thought for a moment. Aha! "One souped-up location spell from a witch I hope is still my friend…"

* * *

"So," Willow reprimanded down the phone ten minutes later, sounding harassed, "are you coming back to the castle any time this week? We have kind of a siege situation developing here."

Buffy winced; on the other side of the table Spike, Connor and Illyria collectively raised an eyebrow. "Yeah, Will, I know – I'm sorry," she said. "But we've got a lead, I think, I –" Suddenly she wondered, "Is Angel OK?" Ethan could still be doing something.

"What?" There was a zapping sound, as if Willow was talking on the move. "Yeah, he's fine; standing in the corner, mooning."

No change there, then. Though, wait… "When you say 'mooning'…?"

"The dealable one," Willow replied with the slightest hint of humour (at last). "Moping and asking where you went."

Buffy let out a sigh of relief, sinking back into Spike's chair. "That's good. That's good… Look, Willow, I was hoping I could ask you a favour – we need to track down Ethan Rayne."

There was another zapping sound. "Hang on a sec –" More zapping, and then a great moaning cry as if from a very large and terrible beast. "OK, shoot," Wilow said finally, sounding calmer. "You know, it's funny – I thought you said you were trying to find Ethan Rayne!"

"No, I am," Buffy replied, frowning. Across from her, Spike rolled his eyes, frustrated.

"But he's, uh, I mean – I thought he was dead?"

"Yeah," Buffy conceded, "but I – we – well, I, mostly, think he might've been faking."

"Oh."

There was a long pause, through which Buffy wasn't sure how to continue. The situation was quickly taken out of her hands, however, as in one quick move, Illyria walked around the desk and seized the phone. "Hey!" she said, unable to grab it back.

"Witch," Illyria commanded, holding the cordless receiver like an idol she was strangling, "perform your spell. No time can be spared for these questions. Tell us whether the mage lives."

"Who the hell is this?" now Willow's voice came screeching, clearly audible. "I'm not being ordered by phone like a pizza; how about a _please_, or a –"

Buffy could only watch, cringing, but Spike deftly plucked the phone from Illyria's fingers and visibly turned on the charm. "Sorry about that, pet," he said. With no one else to look at, Buffy met Connor's eyes and they shared an eye-roll. Spike continued, "I don't think you ever met Illyria – she's rather lacking in the manners department... If you could just do us this one quick favour we'll be back to the battle before you know it, maybe even with some good news." Spike could really lay it on thick, Buffy thought. Did Willow actually go for this stuff? "I can't imagine it could take that much of your time," he added, "not for a witch of your calibre."

It sounded like Willow was demurring – knowingly so, but demurring all the same. Buffy shook her head, part of her wanting to throw up her hands as she sighed. Who was whose best friend now?

Spike caught her eye and winked as they waited, a stream of Willow's burbling coming down the phone.

Eventually Spike said, "Oh, that's marvellous," with very little irony, nodding at something Willow was saying. "Yes, will do," he added, with a definite phone-voice; it was like a mockery of his own. "You take care now; ta." And then he rang off, thumb prodding the button to close the connection.

Everybody stared at him. "Did you actually just say 'ta'?" Buffy asked. It wasn't as if she was a world expert on British English, but, boy, did that sound strange.

"Can I help it if it you Yanks fall for that bollocks?" Spike replied with a shrug, at which point she had to roll her eyes again.

Cutting through her need to continue this conversation, Connor asked, "So, where are we going?"

"Back to bonny Scotland," Spike replied promptly. "About a hundred miles east of the castle – though my longtitude might be off."

"See!" Buffy said, joining the others on their feet. "He's stuck around to gloat – that's so like him."

None of them looked convinced, despite the fact that Connor had, only a few minutes ago, been about as eager as her to accept a third-party cause of all this, rather than Spike's doubts about Angel. "But it could be a body," he said dourly.

"Yeah," Spike replied, scratching the back of his head. "Could be his family has a tomb or something – how much do we even know about this bloke?"

"Not enough," Buffy conceded. "But it's practically on the way, right? Back to the castle?" No one could disagree with that.

* * *

Whatever co-ordinates Willow gave them took the ship to the middle of Aberdeenshire and a respectable grey stone house set in the middle of fields. One was a cow meadow. It wasn't a graveyard, so all hope wasn't lost quite yet, thought it didn't exactly look promising. "I guess we can only hope he's home alone," Buffy said as they climbed out of the ship, Spike locking it behind them with some sort of magi-tronic key fob.

"If not," Connor added, "we can always say we're from the gas company."

"Yeah." Spike snorted. "And our van got waylaid by some activists missing the coal era."

_You know that joke's on you, right?_ Buffy tried to say with a look as they crunched up the gravel drive. "You could have built that thing more inconspicuous, you know."

"What?" he replied, glancing behind them to where the Awesome was parked more than a little ostentatiously. "Like a police box, you reckon?" There was some joke she wasn't getting; after a few seconds of her staring he rolled his eyes.

By that point they'd reached the doorway, grey and weathered oak, and she was about to ask whether they should knock, but Illyria simply kept on walking, breaking the door around its bolt with a crack. "That's one way to do it," Buffy commented instead, following behind her.

The door gave way to a large, open-plan room, comfortably fitted out with a living area on the right and a kitchen on the left. Sitting at a large wooden dining table was one Ethan Rayne, very much alive, startled as he looked up from a scrying basin.

"Oh, hell," he said.

Before she had time to crow about being right, Ethan half-turned, half-fell away from his bench, starting across the slate tile to the kitchen door. Buffy was about to spring after him, but surprise brought her to a halt as it was _Connor_ who leapt over the table first, grabbing and then trapping Ethan against the wall.

"What did you do to my dad?" he demanded. _OK, what?_

"Jesus," Ethan swore, panting. "Who the fuck are you?"

It was the shock that she was thinking the exact same thing that finally tore Buffy out of her silence. "Start talking, Ethan," she said, walking sedately around the table with Spike and Illyria. Sometimes there was menace in the mundane. "Angel the visionary: you had a hand in it. Tell us what you did and how to fix it, else there's four very angry people looking for entertainment."

Straightening himself as Connor stepped away, Ethan proceeded to do the last thing she expected. He said, "No."

"What?" she asked. Connor was pulling back his fist, but Spike put a hand on his shoulder, allowing them to hear whatever it was that Ethan had to say. Buffy added, "What makes you think you have a choice?"

"You forget," Ethan replied, sardonic as ever, "one always has a choice. This just so happens to be our first confrontation where death seems a viable alternative."

"To what?" she demanded.

He smiled, and there was a darkness in his eyes she didn't quite recognise. "To giving you what you want."

She had to clench her jaw to keep her from lashing out, from smacking Ethan's head back against the beige-cream wall. Thankfully, Spike took up the interrogation. "What's in this for you now?" he asked, quite reasonably. "You've had your havoc. It's fair to say the dogs of war are well and truly slipped, so what else is it you want? And," he added, incredulous and irritated as she was, "has Angel ever even _met_ you?"

"We may have spoken once…" At their blank faces, Ethan sighed before saying, "You're slower than I remember if you think that vampire is what's of central importance here."

Spike cut off her angry reply, "Why don't you tell us what is, then?"

"Revenge," he replied, quite serious, voice low. "Chaos. Your complacency." He looked her way and she was again surprised by his fury.

"What?" she asked, controlling herself now against the bait. Spike was onto something here – it didn't seem like it would be hard to get Ethan talking about himself. "My complacency that you're the bad guy? Sorry, but I'm pretty sure that's called being _right_."

Again he smiled. "Not so according to your government. For them it became more than impolitic to keep me locked up after you became Terror Suspect Number One."

"All right, now I think I'm missing part of the story, here," Spike interrupted again, glancing at her and then back to the man at the wall. "You were a government prisoner?" He didn't sound like he could believe it; she'd forgotten he'd been one too.

"Courtesy of Miss Summers," Ethan confirmed. "For over five years."

"You're a killer Ethan," she told him, trying to ignore the feeling creeping up her spine that something was wrong with this picture. "Maybe not with Giles, and maybe you were lucky with the candy, but I _know_ people died that Halloween. And with what you've done now? You deserve to be locked up."

"Would that it were so simple," he replied, without elucidating.

"What the hell does _that_ mean?" Connor asked, crossing his arms as if he had the strength to back up the threat his glare was making. Either he was very good at bluffing, or she was going to have to start recategorising the kid in her mind.

Spike had his own question: "When you say government…?" He looked at her, brows knitted as he joined the dots together. "Oh, Buffy," he said, pleading with her, "tell me you didn't hand _any_ poor sod over to the Initiative."

"I…" She looked back to Ethan, realising now that his eyes weren't dark with evil – not evil alone anyway – they were haunted. That was where the sinking feeling was coming from. There was a reason death didn't frighten him anymore. "It was when Riley and I just started dating; Maggie Walsh was my favourite teacher, I mean, I trusted her – I half-wanted her to come to my birthday party, for god's sake." She couldn't look at Spike – he was still staring at her – so she kept her eyes on Ethan's, trying to work out what they'd done to him. What she'd let them do. Whether she wanted to know. "Where were you, all this time?"

As if thinking back, he raised his eyebrows, leaning more casually against the wall. He looked almost… Confident? This wasn't the Ethan Rayne she remembered. "Well," he said, "it was hard to see where I was going, what with the hood over my head, but I believe I spent most of my time in sunny Cuba."

What? No – he couldn't be saying… Some sort of Guantanamo: the Sequel?

Everyone was speechless – apart from Illyria, who, Buffy assumed, didn't care.

It was like one of those discussions she kept seeing on Scottish BBC News, about prisons leading criminals to reoffend with worse crimes than they'd committed before. If she were honest with herself she could realise that Ethan had never been in the same league as some of the vampires she'd fought, like Angelus, or even Spike – he'd never had any designs on the end of the world, even as he'd left bodies around him. All this, though, with Twilight? This was way beyond what she would have once expected.

Should she have remembered him, when the Initiative collapsed? When she'd realised there was still a special branch out there, recruiting Riley? When she'd realised they hadn't filled in the tunnels after all? Should she have checked up on what they were doing with him? Doing _to_ him?

"The fact that you were mistreated," she began, swallowing an odd sort of guilt – it seemed naïve to suggest he might not have been mistreated, even though she didn't know – "it doesn't undo what you've done. What you've caused." It really didn't, even if her pity-reflex was kicking in.

At that Ethan rolled his eyes. "I'm trembling with remorse."

"Tell us what you did!" Connor couldn't be restrained any longer; he leapt forwards, holding Ethan by the shirt and slamming him into the wall. It was a move possible by jocks across the world and Connor certainly looked like he played some sort of sport, but she was pretty experienced in threats, and this looked like it had more than human muscle behind it. Weird kid.

That, however, was an observation for another day. "Connor!" she shouted after her moment's hesitation. "Put him down. We're… We're not gonna beat the answer out of him."

The boy relented and, just for a moment, Ethan looked surprised – relieved, grateful, confused, frightened – before the mask of indifference came back down over his features. Her stomach twisted with a twinge of nausea. Of course: you couldn't stop someone being a physical coward, only teach them how to hide their fear.

Gradually détente seemed to settle around them, silence punctuated by glares. It was broken only by a fat ginger cat wriggling into the kitchen through the back door's cat flap. Incongruous but presumably not bothered about that, it took in the scene, mewled imperiously, and then stalked off into the living room.

"Mr. Whiskers?" Spike asked sarcastically.

Proving he hadn't changed that much, Ethan replied smartly, "Marmaduke Baggins."

As Illyria sat down in the chair at the head of the table, putting her feet noisily against the wooden top, Buffy sighed. It had been a very long day, and she was more than bored with it now. "Jig's up, Ethan," she said. "You don't wanna die and I don't wanna kill you." Well, part of her did, but that was the part that scared her sometimes and she had a rule, dammit. "One way or another this world is getting back to its regularly scheduled demon quotient, so it's best you just undo what you did."

Ethan stared at her for a long time, presumably weighing something up but she couldn't tell; his expression was utterly opaque. Eventually it relaxed, haggard lines seeming to form around his eyes and mouth as he looked away, shaking his head. "Well, this is embarrassing," he said, wryly. "If we're going to be honest, I didn't _do_ very much." She froze, but refused to process what he was saying until he'd finished. "A very minor suggestion charm and then a trip into that vampire's dreams…" Glancing up, he seemed to reminisce, "I was talking to this bloke in a bar, not long after I got free; he said he was working on a script for a film about thieves in dreams – anyway;" He shook his head an looked at her again. "one of the funniest stories Ripper ever told was about these watchers utterly shitting themselves because of some slayer-vampire shagging prophecy. Since he and you had _become_ the establishment, I thought it was time to give Ripper's least favourite vampire an idea." He sighed. "Little did I know he'd take it to such extremes." Not that he seemed that sad about it.

She didn't have words, but thankfully Connor found some. "If it was only a suggestion," he said, "how come the rest of the world joined in?"

Ethan shrugged, looking for those two seconds exactly like the Ethan she remembered. "Who knows?" With a glance at her it looked like _he_ remembered how he'd used to be – and how she reacted to that sort of non-answer. "He became the man with a mission," he suggested with an edge of desperation, gesturing aimlessly. "Mind over matter – it's not like that isn't what magic is – maybe he found a way to make it so."

"Let me get this straight," Spike responded shortly, putting his hands on his hips in a way that seemed to crowd Ethan closer to the wall. She was glad she wasn't the only one getting angry again. "You're saying you fed Angel the prophecy with the intention of, what? Him brooding about it? Driving Rupert up the wall trying to work out if it would come to pass?" OK – she couldn't help but think Spike was coming up with too many ideas, but, nevertheless, that kind of bullshit sounded worryingly more in character…

Apparently trying to defend his own taste in mayhem, Ethan argued, "You'll be surprised what people will see when they think there's something there." Sighing, he shrugged. "It's fun."

She was going to ignore that, she was going to ignore that… "So you didn't make him decide that it _should_ happen?" she asked, controlling herself. She really didn't want to hear the answer, but she had to ask – oh, god, she had to ask.

Like the tolling of some sort of bell, Ethan shook his head, looking a little shocked at the idea. "I'm not powerful enough to exert that sort of control."

What could she say to that? Biting her lip, she knew there was one last thing she had to ask. "Fine," she said, not really wanting to open her mind to the possibility, but asking it anyway... "Here's the billion dollar question." She paused for a moment, then – "What did you do to me?"

On saying the words, a bolt of adrenaline immediately rushed through her, setting her heart pounding – but Ethan just stared back, confused. "What?" he asked, not getting it at all. "When we went for that jaunt in your dreams? I just wanted you to think that I was dead – maybe have a little fun? – I don't…"

She held up a hand, halting his flow of words. The glow hadn't come from him. Whatever mad path he'd set Angel down, the actual journey he'd taken, the things he'd chosen… It hadn't come from Ethan.

God, she felt sick again.

_Angel, what did you do?_

Trembling, she turned to Spike, not caring that she was assuming command. "Get him on the ship. We need to go back to the castle." Catching something in her eye, Spike quickly demurred.

* * *

The siege at the castle seemed to have stabilised by the time they returned. Ignoring the scathing looks from all the slayers, Buffy led the others to Willow, setting Ethan in front of her and prodding him until he told someone who could understand the actual specifics of what he'd done.

"Oh!" Willow said when he'd finished. "That explains why he's been acting all… Placid. Ever since he came back from Twilight."

"It does?" Buffy asked, casting a glance at Angel who was still, conveniently, acting very non-threatening in the corner. He smiled at her goofily. She tried to smile back, but it didn't quite come. "It's a shame he can't call off the troops." Seriously, she turned back to Willow. "What happened to him?"

"Well," Willow replied, looking at all the group in turn as she put on her teacher voice, even though Illyria seemed to cause a frown across her brow. "Ethan's charm was to make him suggestible, but he combined that with a specific suggestion." Then she gestured in Buffy's direction. "But when _you_ shook off the glow and told him you wanted to come home, you kind of put a bug in his programming, because it couldn't keep following the path his mind had set out – you know, to ascend to Twilight as the super-slayer-vampire consorts, yadda yadda yadda blah."

"OK…" she replied, not really getting it. "And?"

"And you kind of broke him," Willow said, with the slightest impish smile. "He stopped being suggested and became completely suggestible, still under the charm."

Spike looked impatient, arms crossed as he leaned against the castle's stone wall. "You're saying Angel went from megalomaniac to minion all because Buffy wouldn't go along with his plan?"

All Willow did was shrug. "She stopped believing in fairies," she replied, slightly nonsensically.

"Whatever," Buffy said, rolling her eyes. She shoved Ethan in the back. "Remove the charm now."

He sounded like he was about to protest, but the Willow interrupted. "Oh, don't worry, I can do that…" She walked past them, over to Angel, then clicked her fingers twice in front of his eyes. Pink sparks flew, settling on the floor like sugar, then Angel shook his head, seeming to come out of a daze.

"Willow?" he asked blearily. "What…?" Then he paused, patting himself down. "Am I me again?" The hope in his voice almost brought tears to her eyes. "Am I back?"

Stepping out of the corner, Angel looked over Willow's shoulders towards the group. Buffy raised her head, not sure what she was going to say to him, but his reaction to her was utterly upstaged by Connor rushing forward from her right. The young man stopped in front of Angel and they stared at each other, moving to shake hands before Angel broke down and hugged the boy's shoulders to him.

That 'dad' had not been a slip. That much was obvious. But there were so many other questions, urgent ones, and though Buffy could barely stand it she cleared her throat then steeled her voice, asking, "How do we make it stop?"

Solemnly, Angel pulled back from his son and met her eyes. She hated that she shrank away from him now. "I think," he said hesitantly, "we have to go back to Twilight."

Buffy sighed. Spike simply muttered, "Sounds like it's all a-bloody-board then."

When the ship shifted this time the schematic showed nothing but a bold and simple cross. _Display Error_, it said, like the world wasn't even real.

* * *

She wanted to blame Ethan for all of this. It felt like it should be so very easy to blame Ethan for this, but as the ship landed back in the ever-lovely field of Twilight, the man in question was as bemused as the rest of them, keeping a ready distance from the bunny rabbit that hopped past his feet.

"I think I made this place," Angel said as they walked through the meadow, down the rolling slopes of sweet-smelling grass, the sun bright but not too hot in the sky. He didn't seem to be talking to anyone but himself, yet the rest of their strangely large group let him talk, silently following. "I had this idea – I was given this idea, I guess – of how I could be happy. For years all I've been looking for is redemption, but after everything..." Buffy remembered the table of dead friends. "All I wanted was happiness. A moment, if nothing more."

"Making worlds is not for earthbound creatures," Illyria remarked, with a tone of absoluteness.

"I know that," Angel replied absentmindedly, as if to a voice in his head, looking upwards as a bird flitted through the sky. "What I mean is, I dreamed of this place; I knew I couldn't come here, not like I was. I needed power, I needed Buffy to assume more power."

It seemed almost too much that she would finally understand, but she spoke her thoughts all the same. "How did you… Where did the power come from?" she asked, not as strongly as she would have liked to. There was something about this world – calming, sedating, oppressive. Could Angel really have made this?

Still in a daze, Angel replied, "You've been gaining power since Sunnydale, as the leader, the great demagogue." He was still leading them towards the horizon, which now seemed to show a very distant structure, small and square. "All I needed was to transform that power into real terms, manifest its figurative existence materially."

"Oh, I get it!" Willow said sharply, cringing slightly as though she'd disturbed the air. "Did you suggest that to him, Ethan?" She sounded mock-angry, like she knew she should be mad, but was too intrigued to really feel it. "Because that is bad, bad, kind of amazing magic…"

"Willow!" Buffy scolded, while Ethan, walking at her side, frantically tried to defend himself as she turned her glare on him. "Did you?"

"No, definitely not!" he replied desperately. Of course he hadn't, Buffy thought dully.

"A king should know no limitations," Illyria stated, unhelpfully, as she strode serenely through the grass. "Angel's kingship is often worthy of my respect."

"What about everything else?" Spike called towards the front. "The…" He didn't want to say it, but she knew what he was talking about. The sex she couldn't remember. The glow.

"I had to get us here," was all Angel would say – sounding _now_ like he was in shock. She wished she could join him.

The structure on the horizon was growing quickly. Buffy wasn't quite sure why, but she wondered, maybe, whether this world was smaller, making the horizon come closer than it would on Earth? There wasn't much here, after all, she could imagine it being a tiny, tiny planet.

A couple of minutes more and it became clear it was a well, old-fashioned and fairy-tale-looking, with stone bricks built in a round and wooden supports holding up a miniature roof of terracotta tiles. The only thing it was missing was a bucket and a handle. As they drew nearer Buffy felt like she could hear something screaming, or squealing, like a boiling kettle far, far away.

"What's that sound?" she asked the group. It sounded like the sound that had repelled them from Angel's dreams, the dreamstorm. It felt like it would make sense to be so, but then, she told herself, you didn't get that much variation in high-pitched squeals. It wasn't like she could remember the note or anything.

Definitely in shock, or worse, Angel said quite distractedly, "No one can see me. My face must be hidden. The greatest fear is the unknown. Power lies in hiding all your upset, showing the world a perfect face. You have to give yourself up, give yourself over to not caring."

The group glanced between themselves, unsure what to say to that. "Are you all right, Dad?" Connor ventured.

Angel didn't reply until, finally, they drew up to the well. The squealing sound was louder here, but still bearable, so with great care Buffy drew close to the small stone wall, looking over the edge.

It was obvious that the noise was coming from down inside the earth. Ricocheting off the walls it was violently loud and indistinct inside the shaft, horrible screaming echoes circling around and rising up to meet them. It wasn't dark down there – that was the strange thing. It was light, white and bright to the extent that Buffy was certain now that this was what had repelled them from the dreamscape. The thing she'd nearly given herself up to, what Angel seemed to have failed in resisting.

Yet, even as Buffy recognised it, it was Willow who gasped, "Buffy! That's the glow you glowed with. I recognise the signature."

Immediately Buffy's stomach clenched; she stared harder into the sound. It was making her feel sick again and she wondered, for a moment, what would happen if she vomited into the light.

"This is where I threw myself," Angel said, a little quickly as if with nerves. "For a moment I sank into happiness, the heart of this world. The Glow Well. So that all who saw me would know the bliss I was creating – I let myself fall into the well."

No one spoke, though the well continued to scream. Then Ethan cut in, "Can I say, before anyone starts pointing fingers, that I knew nothing about a well."

Irritated, Buffy snapped, "You could have known the Twilight prophecy was founded on _something_!" Could this really have all come about because Angel was searching for happiness?

"We have to get Angel out again," Willow said, ignoring Ethan to look at Buffy. She was taking this seriously now, Buffy could tell, and her mind was running over all the options. Buffy tried to rein in her emotions as she continued, "This place is so literal – if Angel threw himself into the well then we have to get him out of it."

"How?" Spike asked. "This place can be as literal as it likes, but Angel's not bloody _in_ the well, is he? He's standing here." And he was, staring over the wall like the well's light was the most important thing in the world.

"Yeah," Buffy agreed, meeting Spike's eyes for a nod. "And I really don't think we should risk dunking him. We don't wanna make things worse."

As they watched, Angel quite unexpectedly collapsed, his hands still holding the edge of the well as he fell at its side, his shoulders shaking like he was keeping in sobs. Any noise he was making couldn't be heard over the well's wailing, but there was definitely breath moving through his body.

No one said anything for a long time. "I think it's hitting him," Connor said at last, his nerves audible though his voice was raised like everyone else's. "Everything he's done."

Illyria huffed, "He _should_ pay penance for failing in his duty."

Watching Angel do the closest thing to crying she'd ever seen, Buffy wasn't sure how to feel. The whole situation was a mess: Ethan had started it, in revenge for what she'd done, yet some part of Angel had taken that silly plan beyond Ethan's wildest dreams. People were dead. She was – not happy. Things were bad and now they were stuck with a riddle about a well in a parallel dimension. The urge to sit down and cry? It wasn't entirely unfamiliar to her.

"There's gotta be a solution," she said, focusing on the easiest subject to deal with. She'd had _enough_.

The squealing rose through the silence again as it was clear no one had any answer. Illyria was staring off into the distance, probably thinking about something else and Connor was distracted with Angel. Buffy knew she had nothing and the frowns on Spike and Willow's faces implied they were in the same situation.

But then, suddenly, the other member of their party snorted. "Oh, I am getting very bored standing here and waiting for you lot to catch on," Ethan said, rolling his eyes even as she glared at him. "Do you _never_ deal with demons? Great lateral thinkers – or, even easier than that, you could try a crossword once in a while…" OK, she wasn't sure what _that_ was about; she did crosswords all the time – and was pretty good at them when the questions were celeb-orientated. "Let me give you a clue," Ethan continued, mockingly. "How about – there is more than one opposite to Angel being in the well."

"No there isn't," Willow began, still frowning. "There's Angel being out of the well, which is what we're trying to work…" She trailed off, making Buffy wonder what she'd just thought.

"The well being in Angel," Spike said, his frown clearing – and suddenly it was obvious. "That's an opposite."

"We get him to drink the water?" Buffy suggested finally – and even as Ethan yawned it seemed like as good a solution as any. "Oh," the thought crossed her mind. "But there isn't water, only light." She checked over the edge again, just to make certain, but sure enough there was nothing down there but the glow and its screeching.

"I can try and bring some up," Willow said, grimacing as she too stuck her head into the blast of sound. Reaching a hand down, she made a gesture as if scooping the sound towards her, frowning harder and harder as she concentrated.

Ever so very gradually, a slender tendril of light grew from the glow, twining its way upwards towards them. Willow's scoops became gentler, more like sculling motions as it wavered in the air, drifting towards her hand. It brought with it a purer note than the main swell, sweet and high and far more inviting than the rest of the glow.

"Connor," Buffy whispered, feeling like it was the thing to do, and tapped the boy on his shoulder. When he looked at her she continued, "Help me get Angel up."

He nodded and together they pulled Angel to his feet, Spike hovering behind them in case they needed help. Angel's eyes were closed, like he was lost inside his own misery, but Willow's tendril was near the top of the well now, so Buffy took his wrist, bringing his hand towards it. "Take this, Angel – drink it in."

"I don't want to," he muttered, shaking his head like a child. "This doesn't belong to me – I belong to it, don't you see that? This isn't me; I'm lost inside…"

Maybe it was true. The thought nagged at Buffy's consciousness and she hesitated, uncertain that this wouldn't make things worse.

Then came Spike's voice, gentle over their shoulders. "Do you really think that's true, mate? Do you really think it was someone else?" His voice was coaxing, careful – she remembered this was a skill of his. "It's only you who brought us here. Say the word and we'll head home, find another way to fix this." Reverse psychology: it didn't only work on kids. "If it wasn't you, if there's no reason you brought us here…"

"No," Angel replied at last, shaking his head with his eyes still shut. It was the first time he'd sounded like himself again: long-seeing and certain. "This is where I came; this is what I did."

Blindly then, Angel splayed his fingers towards the light. It seemed to recognise him, diving back from Willow to curl deftly around his hand. When it had coiled three times, Buffy carefully led Angel's wrist back to his face – the white tendril darted to Angel's lips, still singing its beguilingly sweet note as Angel swallowed it into himself.

With a flash of white and the blaze of a brilliant, euphonious chord, suddenly but not really unexpectedly the world folded in on itself, meadow and sky flickering away. In an instant they were back in the castle's great hall, collapsing in a heap ten feet away from the SS Awesome, at rest in all its brass glory.

There were there maybe ten seconds before Dawn came rushing in. "What happened?" she asked, though her voice was more like a yell. "Everything just stopped beeping at me; is the world saved?"

As Buffy sat up, she caught a look at Angel's face. The crazed, besotted look he'd sported as Twilight had vanished; it was like his inner peace had been swallowed somewhere deep inside him and he'd been left with the miserable reality of who he'd been and what he'd done. He was about to cry for real, she was sure. She couldn't quite bear to see it.

And so she turned to her sister instead.

"The world?" Buffy said, swallowing back everything she felt. Even if nothing else… "I guess so."


End file.
